Doctors drill holes into woman's head to cure her Tourette's

A WOMAN with Tourette's whose symptoms were so bad she considered killing herself has been virtually cured by pioneering treatment.

A WOMAN with Tourette's whose symptoms were so bad she considered killing herself has been virtually cured by pioneering treatment.

Jayne Bargent, 55, suffered violent head jerks, was often left gasping for breath and was living as a virtual recluse.

She was so desperate she thought about assisted suicide in Switzerland – but just 40 minutes of electric brain therapy has turned her life around.

She said: “It’s amazing. I do not feel I am the same person. I have had three years of getting worse – now I have my life back.”

Mrs Bargent could not cook, drive, read or even walk properly until she underwent a technique called deep brain stimulation.

Surgeons at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London drilled into her head and inserted two pencil-thin electrodes 8cm inside her skull.

An electric current was then switched on and 40 minutes later her symptoms were gone, apart from the odd minor twitch.

Mrs Bargent, of Hampshire, is one of 12 adults with severe Tourette’s Syndrome fitted with a brain stimulator and they will be monitored for six months. She added: “I couldn’t imagine living the rest of my life as I was. I would have considered going over to Switzerland when it got to the stage where I just could not feel I could carry on.”

Consultant neurologist Dr Tom Foltynie, who is running the clinical trial, said: “We generally see effects over days rather than minutes. There are changes that occur in the brain in response to continous delivery of stimulation that get better day by day, week by week.”

Neurosurgeon Ludwig Zrinzo, who carried out the operation on Mrs Bargent, admitted doctors are not certain how the technique works. He said: “We think there is some disorganised information travelling through circuits in the brain. We are dampening these messages and allowing other parts of the brain to take over.”

The operation is already used to treat other neurological conditions including Parkinson’s Disease. Surgeons have to take care not to damage blood vessels during the operation because the patient could have a stroke.

Tourette’s Syndrome affects 300,000 people in Britain but most suffer minor tics and the condition often disappears of its own accord.